Einstein quiz

[snopes]

Comment: My question is about the Einstein Logic puzzle. It is a puzzle
that has been on the web for years. It can be found on many sites and I
have had it emailed to me.

The claim is that this was indeed created by Einstein, which is my first
doubt. My second doubt is the actual answer, according to some websites
such as the one I listed.

Puzzle Link:
http://www.amazeingart.com/fun/einstein-quiz.html

Puzzle Answer:
http://www.amazeingart.com/fun/einst...iz-answer.html

My doubt is that it the intentions was to do the work logically and find
out the answer rather than a loophole as the website indicates.

So my rumour is a two parter:
Did Einstein create this puzzle?
Is the answer suppose to be unsolvable?

[Richard W]

It's a standard logic problem of the sort you get in puzzle books, clearly. If you work it out logically using the clues and a grid, you get (assuming the houses are labelled 1 - 5 left - right):

House 1, Norwegian, yellow, water, Dunhill, cats
House 2, Danish, blue, tea, Blend, horses
House 3, British, red, milk, Pall Mall, birds
House 4, German, green, coffee, Prince, (fish or whatever)
House 5, Swedish, white, beer, Blue Master, dogs

The answer they give is strictly correct, obviously, though... but if this puzzle was in a book, the grid would be drawn out for you and so the last pet would be known - by convention that would be the one asked for.

But they're right that in this context the answer is just "No".

I don't see how you'd even go about proving that it was nothing to do with Einstein - that should be obvious shouldn't it? When was this type of Logic Problem invented? The puzzle books seemed to start in the 1970s, after Einstein died.

[snopes]

I don't see how you'd even go about proving that it was nothing to do with Einstein

Alan Dundes' "Paperwork Empire" books have very similar versions collected from the mid-1970s which neither attribute the problem to Einstein nor include the "Who owns the fish" problem, so I think it's safe to say those are features of atter-day variants.

[Richard W]

It strikes me as a bit of a sneaky question anyway (mostly because I'm annoyed with myself for not seeing what they were getting at until I looked at the answer). I did notice that the fish wasn't mentioned in the clues, but it's mentioned in the question, and the convention for that sort of puzzle usually is that any mention of an item counts to let you know the full list you're looking for.

It's a bit like printing a crossword clue and saying "Can you work this out?" and, if somebody comes up with the answer, then telling them they're wrong because it wasn't a crossword clue, just a random collection of words followed by a number in brackets that didn't mean anything, and their assumption that it was a crossword clue was unjustified.

Well, perhaps not. As I said, I'm just slightly annoyed with myself for not seeing what they were getting at. I was expecting some sort of joke to do with ethnic stereotypes.

[Beldaran]

I just found this tonight, and after an hour or so of working on it, I was annoyed that I had to assume that the Green house and White house were neighbors, when the puzzle simply said "The green house is on the left of the white house". At first that meant to me that the green house couldn't be in position 5, and the white house couldn't be in position 1. After staring at my grid way too long, I finally assumed that they were next to each other rather than the green house being able to be house 2 if the white house was house 4.

So I filled in the rest of the grid in pencil, got the same answers people here got, clicked the answer and I was quite annoyed. I've done these before where a clue will say "The purple man doesn't have clocks" as a way to let you fill in either purple or clocks as a possible answer, not to get to the end and have them say "Ha ha! We didn't tell you that someone DID own clocks, did we?"

[Richard W]

I don't remember having to assume that those houses were next to each other to get the "non-trick" answer - perhaps you just missed a combination...